With Roe being struck down by a far-right Supreme Court majority, conservative activists and lawmakers in Republican-led states are crafting legislation that would make it illegal for the women in the state to travel to another state to get an abortion, the Washington Post reports.
Conservative pundits and politicians have downplayed the effect of the Alito-led Supreme Court overturning the nearly-50-year-old precedent, saying that women in states where abortions will be outlawed simply have to travel to a state where abortion is legal to get the medical procedure. Not only is that a painfully tone-deaf dismissal of removing individual rights and a downplay of the inability of poor people to flit away for a few days, it’s also undermined by these movements.
The draft legislation is set up like the Texas abortion bounty law, which would allow anyone to sue someone who assisted a woman to travel out of state to get an abortion. While this commercialization of law and punishment is legally questionable, it has yet to be addressed by the Supreme Court, so Republicans–who like to claim to be members of the Party of Law and Order (Insert “trum trum” sound here)–are implementing questionable laws that will be difficult to unravel after they get overturned.
The Thomas More Society, a far right legal organization, and The National Association of Christian Lawmakers, a group of anti-choice Republican lawyers and politicians, are helping groups in state capitals around the country craft the legislation.
“Just because you jump across a state line doesn’t mean your home state doesn’t have jurisdiction,” said Peter Breen, vice president and senior counsel for the Thomas More Society. “It’s not a free abortion card when you drive across the state line,” he continued, apparently unaware that the state doesn’t control what people do with their bodies.